A New Super Security Council to Run the World?

Like many other international institutions the Security Council is outdated and needs a reboot. The discussion on what the composition and form of this new body to manage war and peace has been exhausting and going on for a long time.

The idea of more regular major-power coordination got a boost last March 2021 from two influential commentators. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan advanced the idea of a newly institutionalized “concert”:

The best vehicle for promoting stability in the twenty-first century is a global concert of major powers. As the history of the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe demonstrated—its members were the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria—a steering group of leading countries can curb the geopolitical and ideological competition that usually accompanies multipolarity.

Haass and Kupchan believe the Security Council itself is not the right vehicle for this new concert diplomacy and instead propose a new grouping:

A global concert would have six members: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States. Democracies and nondemocracies would have equal standing, and inclusion would be a function of power and influence, not values or regime type. The concert’s members would collectively represent roughly 70 percent of both global GDP and global military spending. Including these six heavyweights in the concert’s ranks would give it geopolitical clout while preventing it from becoming an unwieldy talk shop.

Arguments against the idea should be considered, including why this approach (called “plurilateralism”) won’t likely work and however appealing it may be, draws on Europe’s 19th century past instead of crafting something that could work down the road.

A Downsized State Department

An update on the so-called “deconstruction” of the U.S. Department of State, where the future of American diplomacy is still uncertain. How will a 30% budget cut impact the national interest?

Does Tillerson have the political clout to succeed?

Will reform lead to streamlined diplomacy?

Can we see the outlines of a Trump policy where soft power is ignored at the expense of hard, military might?

‘But as William Burns, a former deputy secretary of state and the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it to me, “Beneath the surface, there’s nothing at all that’s normal.” Hard power and soft power are complementary. Cut out one and American leverage is lost. Wendy Sherman, an under secretary of state in the Obama administration, said, “Whether witting or not, this is not just the disruption of the State Department, it’s the destruction, and the minimization of the role of diplomacy in our national security.”’

“Present at the Destruction”: The Deconstruction of the U.S. Department of State?

via Emily G, Berlin (@EmilyGorcenski)

Last March it appears that even though the “State Department was in disarray” it was still functioning at a moderate clip. Even so, it appeared that the pace had changed, with some calling it “lonely,” with “quiet hallways” and a lot of “sitting around and going home earlier than usual.”

Now, if Max Bergmann is right, what we see at Foggy Bottom, explored earlier this year by ProPublica as “deconstruction of the administrative state,” signals a massive loss of intellectual and social capital for U.S. diplomacy, and may confirm earlier concerns.

What is motivating Tillerson’s demolition effort is anyone’s guess. He may have been a worldly CEO at ExxonMobil, but he had precious little experience in how American diplomacy works. Perhaps Tillerson, as a D.C. and foreign policy novice, is simply being a good soldier, following through on edicts from White House ideologues like Steve Bannon. Perhaps he thinks he is running State like a business. But the problem with running the State Department like a business is that most businesses fail—and American diplomacy is too big to fail.

What is clear, however, is that there is no pressing reason for any of these cuts. America is not a country in decline. Its economy is experiencing an unprecedented period of continuous economic growth, its technology sector is the envy of the world and the American military remains unmatched. Even now, under Trump, America’s allies and enduring values amplify its power and constrain its adversaries. America is not in decline—it is choosing to decline. And Tillerson is making that choice. He is quickly becoming one of the worst and most destructive secretaries of state in the history of our country.

Source: Present at the Destruction: How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking the State Department – POLITICO Magazine

Perhaps this is what Colum Lynch sees as “Trump’s Doctrine of Diplomatic Chaos,” where unpredictability is explained by UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as a strategic imperative–useful to negotiation efforts.

#UNFail Explained

Not all gridlock resides in Washington, D.C.. Frustrated idealists and ambivalent realists share the same interest to understand why the United Nations functions as it does–and Somini Sengupta obliges with this brief yet succinct analysis:

The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, not to mention the war in Syria, have presented diplomats with emotional testimonies of civilian suffering, even alleged crimes against humanity. Yet the 15-member Council has been unable to end these conflicts.

The problem is not that the major world powers don’t care. It is that they care too much.

via Why the U.N. Can’t Solve the World’s Problems – NYTimes.com.